Page 15 of Brutal Fae King
“There is an old tale,” Valirey answers after a second. “About a lost queen. I don’t know much about it, butapparently,this kingdom is supposed to belong to a queen, not a king.”
“Really?” I ask. “What does that mean? Does the king have an older sister?”
“That’s all I know about it,” Valirey answers. “I don’t care for politics, so I never paid attention to any of that kind of thing.”
“I see.”
“The guards will know more about it,” she says to me. “They’re always so much more involved in politics. I suppose it means more to them who they’ll be working for if our king ever gets overthrown.”
She turns over whatever she has in the pan. Fish, I think.
“Doesn’t matter to the chefs,” she grunts. “Cooking is cooking, no matter who it’s for.”
I look back down to my dish.
“I see…” I murmur. “Well, the guards don’t speak to me. I’ve tried.”
“They’ve likely been ordered not to,” Valirey says.
“Is there anyone else who might know more about this lost queen?” I ask. “Anyone interested in politics amongst the staff?”
“Hold on,” she says. “I know that the guards are curious to speak with you—they want to know about the kidnapping and the witch. All we’d need to do is figure out a time and place for you to meet with them.”
“I can think of one place we could meet,” I say, smiling. “There’s a place where no one else goes…”
***
That evening, my “solitary confinement” cell is filled with guards. But they’re not here to guard me.
“So, you’ve never known why you were kidnapping human women from these villages?” I clarify.
All of the armored guards shake their helmeted heads.
“It didn’t make sense,” one of them grunts. “The humans by the ice wall have never bothered us. They are no threat to the dark fae at all. Yet, we were consistently sent in to take the women from the villages.”
“Who were you looking for?” I ask.
“Any woman of a certain age,” the lead guard says, and the others nod in agreement. “And this age kept changing. When we were first sent away, we were looking for those between the ages of ten and twelve. Then, we were looking for those around eleven and fifteen. Then, the age gap widened, and we were looking for those between ten and fifteen. It just kept growing. At this point, it’s between fifteen and twenty-five.”
I’m twenty-three… Maribelle is about fourteen… would she have been safe if she hadn’t had the Weeping Fever?
“So, it was just an age range?” I ask. “Literally just an age range? No description?”
“None,” the guard answers. “We were just told how old the supposed woman was and told to take them away. We don’t even know what this woman was supposed to have done. So we just had to kidnap these humans and take them to the cells. We didn’t know why.”
I hang my head a little.
“And then,” another chimes in, “we were to bring them to the swirling door and put them inside.”
“What happened then?” I ask. “After you put them inside the door?”
“Nothing,” the same guard answers. “They never come back.”
They all nod solemnly, a row of helmets bobbing away. After that, we fall into silence.
My next question was going to be how many women had gone into that swirling door and not come out again. But I don’t think I want to know. I have this horrible squeezing in the pit of my stomach, and I keep swallowing thickly; it feels like all those women’s blood is on my hands. All those women… and he was searching forme…
“So,” the guard who has taken the lead says, “why were we taking those women? What did you do?”
